Publications and a pause
Digital Shakespeares
by Erin Sullivan
3y ago
While Stratford is gearing up for the Shakespeare birthday celebrations this weekend, I’m winding down as I prepare to go on leave for a little while. During that time, this blog will most likely remain silent, though I certainly hope to continue thinking about Shakespeare and digital culture while away! In the last couple of months I’ve had two journal articles published on the topic, and this summer I have a book chapter coming out. All three pieces of writing have been greatly informed by discussions begun on this blog, so I’d like to say a special thank you to everyone who’s taken th ..read more
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Shakespeare Country
Digital Shakespeares
by Erin Sullivan
3y ago
Back from study leave after a busy year of research and writing and now fully immersed in teaching again. One of several things I worked on in 2017 was a short guide to Stratford-upon-Avon and its theatres for a forthcoming book on theatre-going in the UK. Below is an abridged version of the entry, which will hopefully appear in print sometime later in the year. So you’re interesting in going to Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare? Plan for 1-2 days, depending on how much theatre you want to see, and prepare yourself for a charming little oddity of a town that tends to divi ..read more
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Shakespeare’s Emotions, Lost and Found
Digital Shakespeares
by Erin Sullivan
3y ago
On Friday, November 17th, more than 60 Shakespeare students, scholars, theatre practitioners, and enthusiasts gathered at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Other Place Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to discuss emotion in Shakespeare’s plays. This educational event, called ‘Shakespeare’s Emotions, Lost and Found’, was aimed at A-level students and university undergraduates and formed part of the nationwide Being Human Festival, which ran from 17-25 November and showcased research in the humanities in more than 45 UK cities and towns. In Stratford, ‘Shakespeare’s Emotions’ was organized and suppor ..read more
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Seeing Ninagawa: Macbeth and Titus
Digital Shakespeares
by Erin Sullivan
3y ago
  This week at the Shakespeare Institute was a particularly exciting one. A delegation of colleagues from Waseda University in Tokyo came to see us and speak about the late, great theatre director, Yukio Ninagawa. Their visit coincided with the Ninagawa Company’s most recent residency at the Barbican in London, where they performed their revival of Ninagawa’s 1985 production of Macbeth (the production that first brought him to fame in the UK). The Institute and Waseda hosted a special symposium on Ninagawa at the Japanese embassy in London on Friday, and then on Saturday I was ..read more
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What I did this summer
Digital Shakespeares
by Erin Sullivan
3y ago
Summer has officially been and gone, and almost as if on cue the leaves here in Stratford have started to redden and fall. A new cohort of students has arrived, and just three days into the term it feels as if they’ve always been here. The only difference is that I’m on study leave this term, observing all these changes from my window rather than being in the middle of things. Life at the Shakespeare Institute For this precious term of leave I of course have many research goals, and hopefully I’ll be writing more about some of them on this blog in the months to come. But for now I thought it m ..read more
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My Woman’s moment
Digital Shakespeares
by Erin Sullivan
3y ago
I had the great great pleasure of speaking on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour yesterday – as I said in a tweet afterwards, life goal unlocked! I was speaking about parts in Shakespeare’s plays for older actresses – the greatness of them, the scarcity of them, and the possibility that there might be more of them than we think if we continue to embrace cross-gender casting. The full interview is available through the BBC iPlayer here (from minute 30), or you can check out the shorter clip below. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05bc3cv/player   ..read more
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Audiences, Readers, Listeners, Users – Understanding reception in a digital age
Digital Shakespeares
by Erin Sullivan
3y ago
On 18 May I’ll be leading a workshop on ‘Understanding reception in a digital age’ as part of the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Advanced Studies. Below is a description of the event and the schedule for the day. If you’re a researcher at UoB or an artist in the Midlands region and are interested in attending, please get in touch! Digital connectivity is radically reshaping how we engage with culture in the 21st century. Whether it’s the books we read, the music we listen to, the theatre we see, or the people with whom we interact, new technologies are remapping the way we access, c ..read more
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Aura, aliveness, and art
Digital Shakespeares
by Erin Sullivan
3y ago
A second post inspired in part by Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, and the final one — I think — about my research adventures in the US last month. So I’ve finished Benjamin’s essay now. At a whopping 10 pages, this perhaps isn’t saying much, but the intelligence, weight, and importance of the ideas presented there are not to be digested hastily. I’m still not sure if I know where Benjamin ultimately stood on the issue of technology’s impact on art: it seems clear that he’s disconcerted, dismayed even, by the way reproduction erases a work’s history and erode ..read more
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The ghost in the machine
Digital Shakespeares
by Erin Sullivan
3y ago
The ghost of Hamlet’s father in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The Story of the Play Concisely Told with 55 Illustrations from the Cinematograph Film (1913). From the Folger Shakespeare Library Collections.   ‘…profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful…’ When Walter Benjamin decided to start his now-famous essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, with these words from Paul Valéry, his attitude towards the future they envisioned might be described as ambivalent at best. Writing in 1936, in the early years of what would become the gold ..read more
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Shakespeare: The Game
Digital Shakespeares
by Erin Sullivan
3y ago
This month I’m in residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, home to the largest dedicated collection of Shakespeare-related materials in the world. I’m in heaven! My focus during my time here is on the pre-history of digital Shakespeares — that is, the kinds of stage technologies that pre-date the proliferation of digital adaptations in the twenty-first century. This means that I’ve been looking at programmes from productions like Robert Lepage’s Elsinore, and also ogling over photos of Richard Burton & co. in their groundbreaking ‘Electronovision’  ..read more
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